Tiny King Seamus

He was the tiny king of the world's smallest microdictatorship.

He referred to it as his island nation though it was really just seven-ninths of a square meter that was cordoned off in the vacant lot next to Baxter Park.

"Sing to me not of your troubled refrains and broken governments. We will not recognize your sovereignty until you recognize ours." He always spouted such nonsense through the broken megaphone he carried with him like a scepter.

When they came to haul him off to the mental ward, they found that he'd appointed a rabid rottweiler as Minister of Defense.

Future Tech

People constantly ask me what the future will be like. They know my arrival in this time was accidental but they fear I'm actually fleeing some kind of apocalyptic future.

I worry about the ramifications of my presence here. Will I alter the future and do irreparable harm to my loved ones? Will I ever find my way back?

No one wants to hear about this. They just want to know if their future is safe.

Yet they always accuse me of lying when I say that pretty much everything is the same, except we all travel by carrier pigeon.

Heather

Life on the desert island has not always been idyllic. There's the sunburn and the crab bites and the constant hunger.

Of course, then there's Heather. She had always seemed like the most beautiful woman in the world and now, for all intents and purposes, she's the only woman in the world. He counts himself lucky to be stranded with her all alone.

Sure, even after six months, Heather still refuses his advances, but when she realizes that he will be the last living man she ever sees, she'll surely come around.

It was definitely worth faking the plane crash.

Overdue

Dave looked at the dead body and expected a measure of remorse that never materialized. He realized the man's death had been completely warranted.

Murder, in both the legal and moral sense, can at certain times be justified. Self-defense is the most obvious example, but there are also cases of extreme mental and emotional abuse which absolve a murderer of guilt. Warfare allows for the killing of enemy soldiers even when on the losing side.

In this case, the pile of overdue library books stacked high in the corner gave Dave all the reason he needed to kill Mr. O'Leary.

The Field

They wanted to build condominiums there, but when the construction crew arrived, Rufus scared them away.

A cluster of songbirds burst from the long grass every time Rufus barked. The neighborhood knew that he commanded the abandoned field, not the city council, not the eager developers. The pitbull had fought off Animal Control and the Humane Society enough times to have earned his dominion in perpetuity.

Rufus wasn't a stray. He belonged to the field, ever since his former owner passed and left him to fend for himself.

Rufus would die before he allowed anyone to take away his field.

Lane Number Forty-Two

The Lucky 100 Bowling Plaza of Wahoo, Nebraska, always kept lane number forty-two cordoned off with a fancy red rope. On summer nights, the waiting room filled with families waiting to bowl, but lane number forty-two would always remain closed.

One particularly busy evening, Mickey Landsman was especially irked that he had to wait while there was a perfectly good lane not being used. But when he complained to the manager, he was informed that the lane was reserved for God.

As it turns out, when he has the free time, God visits the Lucky 100 to get in a few frames.

The Black Dots, Part Five

In my visit to the pharmaceuticals factory, I discovered that there was no black dot serial killer. The black dots themselves were the murderer. It was a virus that was being manufactured as a biological weapon and it had somehow leaked out of one of the containment units.

My attempt to see Mr. Dowling served two functions. I was hoping that he had access to an antidote, though I knew that to be unlikely. Failing a cure, I intended to infect him the same way he had infected me. Then we could die together.

In the end, I died alone.

The Black Dots, Part Four

By the time I got to Pine Hill, someone had warned Mr. Dowling of my impending arrival. An army of his goons were waiting for me outside. There was no way I was getting an audience.

I thought maybe they'd been warned about how I shot up the pharmaceuticals factory and they weren't going to let me do the same thing to Mr. Dowling's precious estate. Turns out I'd misread the situation.

I now had my own Black Dot on my forehead. It meant I had only a few hours to find a solution or I'd be the next victim.

The Black Dots, Part Three

No one could remember what the pharmaceuticals factory was built for, other than to pollute the entire city with noxious fumes and wastewater. It was owned by Rufus T. Dowling, the reclusive textiles baron who at one time controlled more than a third of the city's real estate.

Ever since his wife's death, he had rarely been seen in public and his empire was in decline.

Once I had learned the truth about the black dot killings, the first question I wanted answered was whether Dowling knew about the plot. That's why I drove to his mansion on Pine Hill.

The Black Dots, Part Two

The pharmaceuticals factory was something of a dinosaur, antiquated and larger-than-life at the same time. It loomed so ominously over the lake district that only the most desperate dared to visit. If there was a serial killer operating in its shadow, some of the more authoritarian city elders might have deemed it good for social welfare.

My sinking ship of a career cried out for me to catch the black dot killer, so I conducted the investigation alone.

Turns out I was right about the pharmaceuticals factory but wrong about the killer. The reality was even worse than I'd imagined.